


empty man

by rosebarsoap



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-29
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 18:46:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 8,632
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17208911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosebarsoap/pseuds/rosebarsoap
Summary: fen'harel ma ghilana.





	1. six minutes of watching

Solas has never been one for… Affections.  
Of course, he’s no virgin in any sense of the word. He’s had his affairs and temptations and whatnot, but when he sees her thrust her Fade-charged palm into the face of danger, fingertips crackling with power, mud smeared on her jaw and in her fire-shaded hair, he feels a tug in his belly he hasn’t felt for what feels like centuries.  
Yet every time they go into the field, Nessa Lavellan makes his stomach do backflips. Several of them.  
They’re both mages— distance fighters, much to his chagrin and benefit. Means he can watch her every move without getting funny glances from the Warden or the Qunari— neither of which would notice, he believes.  
(They do.)  
She twirls her staff and sends down a storm of fire upon the three rage demons within the clearing in the Exalted Plains, their scalding edges unharmed by the river’s touch. Nessa, of course, appears unbothered: the wind blows a strand of her scruffy hair, imperfectly perfect, into her face and she puffs it out of the way with a blow from her bruised lips. The Templar they fought earlier that morning got a little too close for comfort as she charged another spell, managing to swing (and land) a punch with the last of his strength—  
Before Solas froze him in his tracks, arm still stuck out an inch from Nessa’s throat before it shatters with the rest of him. She thanked him, a smile in the corner of her mouth, and he caught himself rubbernecking as she ran to check on the rest of the team. Thankfully, she was too busy digging for a healing draft for Blackwall’s newly broken nose to notice how Solas watches her, traces her lithe form, drags furrows across her face following the _vallaslin_ tainting her freckled cheeks. He wonders how far down her collar the markings go, but shakes the thought from his head. At least Cole isn't here to grab hold of it and sing it aloud.  
The river water swirls around their calves as they cast spells in near unison, a dance that rivals Halamshiral’s calculated choreography, and just as she closes the rift for good, a quarter-way through her signature twist as the magic pours from the Fade’s newly-stitched tear, the ever graceful Inquisitor _slips_.  
She shouts something undignified that times perfectly with the splash as she hits the water. It’s nothing to drown her, naturally, but she lands in such an awkward way that manages to drench her from head to toe; her armor shielded most of her form, but beneath the wide belt at her waist the Dalish fabrics _cling_ to her tiny self, leaving even less to the imagination than her midnight blue tunic does at Skyhold. He pointedly stares at the water’s surface, watching his reflection wobble with the river’s flow.  
By the Old Gods themselves, Solas cannot _believe_ how this day progresses. Next they’ll fight a dragon that tears her armor off in front of him.  
“You alright, Boss?” Iron Bull shoulders his battle axe and jogs over to lend her a hand out of the water. He picks her up off her feet and drops her onto the pebbled shoreline; Solas sees how she begins to shiver as soon as the brisk Plains air hits her shoulders.  
“Oh, I’m fine. Just fancied a quick bath, that’s all.” Typical Nessa, ever with the quick retorts. She shakes her head like a Mabari mutt post-bath and her hair curls up around her brow.  
“Rather bracing soak, don’t y’think?” Blackwall wrings out his own hair and goes to tie it back from the nape of his neck. “Even my feet are frozen solid from muckin’ about in that damned river.”  
She winds her arms around her torso and shrugs, forgoing a reply in favor of taking her staff from Solas’s outstretched hand— he managed to catch it before it skittered down the river, dancing with the current. He nods as she wraps her hand around the sun-warmed steel, but her touch comes in a blast of cold when her fingertips brushes past his knuckles. She’s _freezing_.  
“There is a cave nearby; we can head in that direction and set up camp for the night.” His suggestion meets three eager nods, and they head southwest after double-checking the map, skirting past the Dalish camp on the way. The wind stutters through them and Nessa hisses in protest, shoulders curling in as she braces from the breeze. It’s not that cold to Solas’s dry self, but her armor, cold metal and frozen fabric…  
“ _Da’len_. Here.”  
He hands her his staff as he slips off the outer layer of his clothing— it’s nothing more than a sleeveless vest, hip-length, but the fur lining adds an extra shield against a stiff wind. He trades her staff for vest, and her brow quirks at his sudden… kindness. He supposes that’s the word, the action she’s unfamiliar to him giving.  
“Solas, I—“  
“You’re cold. It will help.”  
He nods once more before walking ahead, refusing his want to turn and look at her until he hears her footsteps beside his, squelching through the wet grass. He goes to glance. He fails.  
The fur suits her well, rising above the sharp cut of her jaw and tickling her cheekbones, as she turned the collar up to replenish more heat. It’s a stark off-white to her flaming red, half-dry hair in her eyes curlier than he could remember ever seeing it. The warmth lends a flush of pink across her face, tinting her freckles and making her dark eyes bright as she recovers.  
Of course. Only Nessa could look so void-damned beautiful after _falling in a river._


	2. one hour of wanting

Turns out the cave marked on the map wasn’t really a cave, but abandoned ruins.  
After taking out the handful of Venatori camped inside, they set up a small fire and examine the remaining provisions left behind by the previous campers. Enough for a night, at the very least; they can reassess and trek back to an established camp in the morning. For tonight, all the four of them need is warmth, sleep, and somewhere somewhat protected.  
Nessa sits within a safely short distance of the fire, warming her hands against the heat. Solas sits atop a crate and studies her palms, how the Mark bisects her skin with an ugly gash that was never meant to be there.  
(“Never meant to hurt her, never meant to hoist this unbelievable weight of responsibility onto her shoulders, strong, small, sturdy. She doesn’t deserve the hurt,” Cole murmured to him a few days prior, and the words play over in his head like a prayer.)  
“I can take first watch,” Bull offers, standing at the Inquisitor’s side with his arms folded over his broad chest. “You must be tired after your swim earlier.”  
“One day the songs will sing of your hilarity, Bull,” Nessa quips, but her eye-roll reads affectionate. “I appreciate it. I might go see what these baths have to offer in the way of actual bathing— I’m still pulling spindleweed out of my armor.”  
As if on cue, she wriggles and peels a piece of the pink herb from inside her chest-piece. She tosses it into the fire; the smoke tastes like healing potion.  
“Well, if all I’m gonna miss is pullin’ herbs out of various places, I’m taking the first bedroll I can find.” Blackwall nods to the rest of the team before dipping inside the makeshift tent. Within _minutes_ , he’s snoring loud enough to shake the stones of the baths.  
“That’s gonna be great to sing you guys to sleep,” Bull laughs. “If you can even stand to miss his sweet, sweet snores.”  
“And with that, I’m going to explore these ruins.” Nessa’s announcement comes with her getting to her feet, brushing off her thighs and heading out towards the edge of the baths. “Try not to let him die if he starts an earthquake.”  
“No promises, Boss.”  
Solas elects not to answer; rather, he stares down her back as she turns the corner further into the baths, listening until her footsteps fall from earshot. The camp remains quiet for all of three seconds.  
“So. You got eyes for her or not?”  
“I beg your pardon?” Solas tries to press his lips together to stop himself from sputtering his answer, but Bull’s knowing smirk makes the crease between his brows deepen.  
“”You’re cold, it will help”,” Bull echoes, but even Solas knows it’s in jest; doesn’t stop him from rolling his eyes. “Trust me, I’ve used that move at least three times.”  
Solas sighs, studying his staff in an attempt to hide from Bull and his… his _knowing_.  
“I’m not sure what you’re referring to.”  
“Sure you don’t.”  
Of course he does.  
Solas sighs, looking over his shoulder as Bull laughs. With a shake of his head, he rests his forearms on his knees, staring him down with a positively infuriating look.  
“Look, I’m not gonna go tellin’ her your deep dark secret. You’d have problems if Sera was here— she’s more of a gossip than half the Orlesians we’re harboring in Skyhold.”  
The wind in the ruins whistles between the rocks, harmonizing very badly with Blackwall’s untimely snore.  
“But we’re in some deep shit here. Archdemons and Fade rift things and all sorts of crap. If I were you, I’d take whatever opportunity I could get. — And _yeah_ , I mean in _that_ way, even if you don’t. Doesn’t mean you have to sit on your feelings while the world falls apart.”  
He’s taken aback, for one thing; Solas hasn’t found this sort of sentimentality coming from Bull since… Well, since ever. His surprise must show on his features as before he can comment, Bull interrupts with “Don’t get used to this comin’ from me. Just giving you a heads up on taking what you want.”  
“Such a crass last remark after some truly sparkling commentary,” Solas mutters, standing up and brushing dust off the backs of his thighs.  
“Taking what you want, but also getting what you _need_. And I know a need when I see it.”  
This time, Solas knows he’s not talking about “ _that_ way”. He looks back to the direction Nessa ventured out towards and leans on his staff for a brief moment of support.  
“She made two lefts and a right. There was steam comin’ up from where she was, but it’s gone now.”  
Solas turns to Iron Bull with a suspicious raised brow.  
“Have to make sure our Boss won’t get jumped without me knowin’ exactly where she went. Not that she couldn’t take care of herself— we both saw her set those Vints on fire with such gusto.”  
Oh, Solas remembers. She does this one staff twirl before stabbing the soil with it, and the fire that shoots from the top reminds him of spirits soaring through the Fade, free and flying. He tries to hide his smile, but Bull finds it before he gets a chance. The one time he’s not perfectly poised with a witty retort and his unseeable Halamshiral mask and the _Tal-Vashoth_ sees straight through him.  
“Oh, you got it _bad_.”  
Solas bides his time until Bull passes the baton for patrol, waiting almost patiently for the Qunari’s low rumbling breaths to make his move. It’s thankfully only a half-hour since their conversation; the moon hangs high and Nessa still hasn’t returned, so Solas does what any good man (or elf) would do: go find her.  
Two lefts and a right. There’s steam rising from her alleged location.  
Channeling Cole’s uneasy knack for silence, he follows the given directions until he hears a small, quiet sigh that nearly sends his heart up his throat. Solas stops, pauses, waits. He dares to look around the corner of the rock concealing him from view, one pointed ear and one curious eye searching the area. His foot shuffles in the same direction, making contact with something on the ground, and he looks down to see the offending… Shoe.  
Nessa’s shoe, her long boot that melds into the legs of her armor. The rest of which lies discarded close to the shoe, and Solas holds his breath as he turns to the source of the splash of water he hears a few feet away.  
(What did he expect, a demon? No. This is far more dangerous.)  
She faces away from him, thank the Maker, but with her armor on the floor, he can count each freckle on her bare back with ease, noting a nasty scar around the concave of her waist and one slashed through her shoulder-blade. The water swirls at hip-height for her, the half-moon shining and glowing on her skin, thin fingers curling around her upper arms. Her shoulders, usually tense and pulled back, lay loose and relaxed, her head tilted up to the navy the night sky wears tonight. Even with her back to him, Solas knows this is a brief moment of solace for her; he sees her when she comes out of the council meetings, with her brow furrowed and her eyes devoid of the bright that usually twinkles there. He knows she doesn’t get many moments like this— and that he shouldn’t encroach on it. But he stays. He watches. Just for a moment. Or a long moment.  
He’s making sure nothing gets to her, right. She’s vulnerable (and naked) and alone in a large pond of heated water (that she warmed up herself beforehand, as a fire mage would) and someone could easily come and attack Nessa— the _Inquisitor_ — when she’s here and away from her team. Yes, the Inquisitor. Not Nessa, he decides, making constellations with the freckles along her spine.  
He can’t afford himself the luxury of getting too close.


	3. five days of fretting

**one.**  
She doesn’t take him, this time. He doesn’t know why Nessa picked such an unbalanced team of Blackwall, Vivienne, Dorian, and herself; three mages and one warrior sent her advisors’ tongues wagging. Solas wants to tell her to change her team, take at least one rogue, maybe another warrior for backup.  
Take him. Take _him _instead of Vivienne and Dorian.__  
But he doesn’t, and she sets off to Emprise du Lion on horseback, leaving him and his heavy heart in Skyhold. It’s not that he’s worried about her— he knows full well she takes care of her affairs with the fearless bravado of a true leader. But he isn’t there to make sure she has a barrier against attacks, knowledge where her Elven might fail, someone to keep watch when she wanders into abandoned baths and takes all her clothes off—  
“Somethin’ on your mind, Chuckles?”  
Solas would say he didn’t flinch at the new voice in his rotunda, but he absolutely did.  
“You have an uncanny ability to appear when most unneeded.”  
“Ah, what can I say,” Varric chuckles, venturing further into the room and leaning against the desk in the center, arms folded over his broad chest. “People never see me comin’.”  
“Mm.”  
Solas _really_ isn’t in the mood for Tethras and his ever-jovial demeanor at this moment. Unfortunately, it seems he has to deal with it regardless.  
“Spitfire left this morning, right?”  
As much as he… _tolerates_ Varric, his nickname for Nessa fits her far too well for Solas’s liking.  
“You decide to stay here rather than grace her with your presence?”  
“She… elected to take a different team,” Solas manages, feigning undivided interest in his cup of tea.  
“Any reason why? Didn’t think she’d leave without _you_ , of all people.”  
Varric’s offhand statement makes Solas’s shoulders loosen from their stress, and he finally makes eye contact with the dwarf. Who, as he usually does, has a shit-eating grin on his face.  
“That got your attention, huh?”  
“Why do you insist on being bothersome?”  
“Ah, it’s part of my rugged charm.”  
Varric laughs, shaking his head at Solas.  
“Unusually crabby today. Somethin’ in your tea?”  
It’s tea, he detests the stuff.  
“No.”  
“Fine, fine. I’ll leave you to your _brooding_.” Varric heads to the door, but as he heads back to his place next to the hearth, he leaves Solas with some (infuriatingly correct) parting words.  
“But I’ve seen how you two look at each other. Times like these aren’t the ones to be sittin’ on your ass and hoping for shit to fall into your lap.”  
**two.**  
Nessa didn’t tell anyone outside of her advisors and her expedition team what the mission entailed, but Solas woke the next morning expecting her return in the coming hours. When it didn’t happen, some part of him sank in the pit of his stomach like a pebble in still water, which he quickly fished out and pretended never fell in the first place.  
He’s not worried about her.  
He finds things to fill the hours as the time slugs by. Reading, studying, venturing into the Fade. It’s the latter where he finds even the spirits he encounter ask about the Inquisitor, who manages to haunt both his waking and resting lives. He rises, sighs, and starts to leave for outside, for fresh air and escaping her thought.  
“She won’t leave you alone, even when you’re lonely.”  
The airy voice originates from atop his desk, hiding behind a wide-brimmed hat and watery, darting eyes.  
“Cole—“  
“Why don’t you tell her?” He swings his legs back and forth, watching his feet. “You want to walk with her in dreams, around the universe and then some more, but you don’t. You won’t.”  
There’s no point in trying to tell Cole to be quiet— Solas’s mind swims with her. Drowns from her. Cole can swallow a teaspoon of his thoughts and there’d still be thousands more to drink.  
“The mark sears through her, it’s breaking down more than just the skin on her palm. The dog runs from her touch, fearing of the fearless, of what she could do to him if she discovers—“  
Solas leaves.  
**three.**  
The third day starts and Solas has almost paced a rut into the tiles of the rotunda floor. It feels like he’s read every book on the shelves upstairs (and to be frank, he knows just about everything in those books anyway) and he’s getting, Maker-forbid, _antsy_. He trains, he reads, he walks, he sleeps.  
She’s still not back.  
He hears footsteps coming from the main hall towards his door— there’s a grand total of three people it could be, and two of them he’d rather not see at this moment. Dorian would be all-too pleased to find out about his... Fondness. And Leliana would take one look at his messy desk and come to six different conclusions, one of which would be _right_ , because _of course_ it would be.  
Dorian, thankfully, was one of the chosen to go on Nessa’s mission (followed by a cloud of heavy Solas Jealousy— _Concern_. Not Jealousy). Though the footsteps sound too heavy for the Spymaster; they’re metallic clanging and heavy and tired. Leaving only one person to walk through his rotunda who might know something of Nessa’s location, but he’d never outright ask him.  
“Have you heard anything?”  
Cullen stops in his tracks, halfway marked between Solas’s desk and the door to the walkway to his office. The question blurts when he means to shut his mouth after the Commander’s courteous greeting. He’s almost embarrassed he asked, but at least it was Cullen. Leliana would be more inquisitive, her ravens’ prying eyes burning his skin.  
“From the Inquisitor?”  
Cullen’s shock stops his reply from coming for a good few seconds, but he rolls his shoulders back— and shakes his head.  
“Not since they arrived two days ago, no.” He files the papers in his hands together, organizing them into a neat pile he tucks under his arm. “They should return fairly soon, though. Maker be willing.”  
Solas wants to pry— to ask what they’re doing, what’s going on, where in Emprise du Lion Nessa swanned off to with only her staff and her wits about her. Why she didn’t tell him about it. He’d be mad, ordinarily; she’s keeping him in the dark for no apparent reason. This time feels different, though.  
But he’s not worried about her.  
“Solas?”  
His head snaps up and Cullen arches his scarred brow at him, quizzical.  
“I, ah… She’ll be alright.”  
Cullen. Sweet, weird, Cullen. Solas offers a kind smile— uncharacteristic of him, but Cullen takes his leave with such a surprised expression that it finally gives Solas something to laugh about.  
**four.**  
A green recruit comes in, salutes, and stutters out a report sent by Josephine: “The Inquisitor will be back by tomorrow sunset.”  
He smiles, waves the recruit away with a thankful nod, and he waits just a little while more.  
**five.**  
He’s worried about her.  
Solas sits at his desk and drums willowy fingers against the redwood surface, waiting for the sounding horn to alert Skyhold of the Inquisitor’s return. It’s evening now— still a while from the hour the recruit told him— but he can’t help running the worst outcomes through his mind, as a form of torture to pass the time.  
He knows she can save herself from battle, and he knows she’s not a weak young Halla sent out to the slaughter. Yet he frets like a frantic family member, a close friend.  
Something more, even.  
He brushes his worries to the back corners of his mind (where they fester and grow and get _worse_ , naturally), deciding to choose a book from the vast library upstairs to push the panic further away. Solas goes upstairs, awaiting that one really comfy chair in the corner where Dorian typically (dramatically) lounges.  
“Oh, Solas! Just the man I was hoping to see!”  
Speaking of the dramatically lounging Dorian.  
“I wanted to ask you a bit on Elvish poetry, you see—“  
Hold on. Dorian. The same Dorian who went on the mission with—  
“I… Didn’t hear you return from Emprise du Lion.”  
He cuts Dorian’s question off, causing the latter’s eyebrow to arch in question. Solas then notices the nasty bruise under Dorian’s right eye, the gash on his exposed collarbone.  
“Oh, well. We got back a little while ago; they must have forgotten to tell everyone of our miraculous victorious return! Capturing the keep was no easy feat, after all.”  
Solas nods, feigning interest. Dorian, being Dorian, follows his eye contact to the deep purple on his cheekbone and he laughs.  
“Thankfully I got some of the easier blows. Healing Nessa’s broken nose looked far worse before we found a healer in that damned snow.”  
He valiantly attempts to hide his shock, and thankfully Dorian’s too busy talking about his hatred of snow to notice.  
“The Inquisitor went straight to her quarters once we got back— didn’t even stop for her advisors on her way! I cannot believe that—“  
Solas doesn’t so much as tell Dorian that he’s leaving, but rather, he shows him by immediately turning on his heel and heading back downstairs. As he goes he hears “Oh, and… There he goes, I suppose”, but Solas is already halfway through the rotunda when he realizes the sheer impoliteness of his sudden departure.  
Eh. It doesn’t really matter at this point. Feels like half of Skyhold knows about his feelings— save for Nessa herself.  
He strides through the Great Hall, an oncoming storm, thunder in his ears as his heart thuds against his ribs. Solas wants to say he has no clue why he’s nervous to see her, but he knows exactly why his knuckles hesitate to rap against the door. There’s no guards at the entrance to her quarters, oddly, but this one time he thanks any and all gods who listen as he knocks.  
“Come in,” Nessa calls, and Solas follows her voice like a moth to a flame.


	4. three weeks of needing

It occurs to Solas that he’s not actually been in her quarters before. No idea what it looks like, smells like, what the view is outside the balcony she stands at as the sun climbs above the mountain range, staring out to nowhere in a brief moment of peace.  
He doesn’t know what her bed feels like. — Not that he’s thinking about that, anyway.  
Heading up the stairs, he sighs, rubbing his temples with shaking hands. Solas, getting _nervous_ to see N— the Inquisitor. The _Inquisitor_.  
It’s not like they never hung out one-on-one. He took her to the Fade once; they wandered around a memory of Haven, as snow stuck to his ears and clung to her eyelashes. They stood in the barracks where she once kneeled, imprisoned, and he told her how he watched over her, studying the Anchor as she slept.  
He knew she wanted to tell him something _more_ when they came outside, when he got a little too soft remembering he saw her first seal a rift.  
“Felt the whole world change?”  
“A figure of speech.”  
“I’m aware the metaphor. I’m more interested in _felt_.”  
She went quiet after that. Out the corner of his eye, Solas saw her turn to him, her hand twitch, but she stalled. He wanted to say more, _tell her_ more, but he found himself as lost for words as she was. He doesn’t want to say it kept him up at night, wondering—  
But it kept him up at night, wondering.  
“Inquisitor?”  
“Over here, Solas.”  
She’s on the balcony, leaning against the short wall on her elbows. When he comes to the outside door she turns to face him, and it takes a lot of void-damned strength for Solas to not rush over and fuss over her bruised face.  
“You’re injured.”  
“It happens frequently in this line of work,” Nessa jokes, but her fingertips fly up to an angry purple mark on her jaw; she pokes at the tender skin. “Thankfully we found a healer in Sahrnia… Some Red Templar broke my nose.”  
He notices the new crinkle in her nose when she smiles, where once swung a slope now cracks a jagged line. He _also_ notices that she had a change of clothes— instead of her brilliant blue overshirt she wears a loose tunic, which slips off one freckled shoulder when she stretches her arms over her head. It’s all skin foreign to him, bare and bruised from the fighting. He wants to offer to solve the hurt, but to stop himself from sounding like Cole, he opts for something else.  
“Long journey back?” Solas asks, joining her and resting a hand on the balcony wall. He pretends not to be hyper-aware that when she returns to her position at his side, her hand is mere centimeters from being tucked under his. Her Fade-cracked hands, carrying the entirety of southern Thedas as it threads around her little fingers.  
“The longest.” She looks up at him, their matching grey eyes boring into the other’s. “I’m… glad to be back, though.”  
He offers her a small smile, one she easily returns. “I’m glad for your safe return, N—Inquisitor.”  
Solas catches the smallest, fastest frown tug at the corners of her mouth; her attention goes back to the mountains before he comments further. Silence hangs over them like the Breach in the sky.  
“Solas, why do you avoid calling me… my name?”  
His brow raises. “I’m not sure what you’re implying,” he tries, clasping his hands behind his back.  
“Everyone calls me “Herald” or “Inquisitor”, or “my lady”, when they’re _really_ trying to get on my good side,” the Inquisitor says. She turns to look at him, but her gaze feels distant. “I know they’re trying to be polite, but…”  
“It feels like nobody knows who you are, past your title.”  
He understands. It’s an empathy he can’t share with her, but he understands.  
In her quiet pause he notices more about her as she stands at the balcony: bruised elbows, slumped shoulders, a hand rubbing the back of her neck (perhaps in an effort to smooth out a tight knot). The dark half-moons stamped under her tired eyes that shine purple under the sun. He’s surprised he didn’t notice prior, but he was a bit busy being stuck in his head.  
Her hand inches closer to his on the balcony wall. For once, he doesn’t notice. For what feels like the billionth time, he’s too busy staring at Nessa to notice.  
He wants to correct himself when he even thinks her name; he can’t let himself think he’s allowed that right. He’s heard Cassandra call her by name only _once_ , and that was for paperwork to do with claiming the broken bridge in the Exalted Plains. Someone like him doesn’t deserve the privilege of knowing the Inquisitor past the title and the Anchor. He can’t get too close. Leaving would only be harder then.  
“Solas?”  
She twines their pinky fingers together. He can almost hear her wrack her brain for her next words.  
“I’m still _me_. Still the prisoner you watched over in Haven, making sure the Mark didn’t kill me. Even I sometimes forget that.”  
Solas turns his hand over to take her hand proper, slowly, carefully. Her quiet intake of breath slices the silence and he nods for her to continue, both electing to stare at the mountains than at each other.  
Her fingers are small between his. He feels the calluses from where she holds her staff, the burn on her left palm.  
“But… you’re you. I don’t want you to call me Inquisitor, Herald, my lady, whatever sounds fancier— I want to be _me_. I want to be—”  
“Nessa.”  
He shifts, shoulders turning to hers, but making sure their hands don’t detangle with the movement; she watches him intently, lips slightly parted, and Solas tries his hardest not to stare when she licks the dryness off.  
“You want to be Nessa.”  
She blushes red as her hair and turns away, fixating on a certain snowbank and avoiding Solas’s small, knowing (and nervous) smile.  
“… Say it again,” she murmurs.  
He lifts his free hand and cups her cheek, turning her head towards him and she takes a step closer. He can hear his heartbeat thud against his ribs— or is that hers? She’s suddenly so close her chest brushes against his. Her chin tilts up as she waits for his reply.  
“Nessa.”  
“Again.”  
“Is that an _order_ , Nessa?” Solas can’t help the chuckle that rumbles through him, and he knows she feels it through his shirt. She doesn’t once take her eyes from his, and his laugh dies in his throat when she smirks— she _smirks!_ The _gall_ of this woman— and leans into his palm, arches a brow.  
“Would you obey it if it was?”  
She’ll be the death of him, she truly will. His surprise must be evident on his features; she laughs lowly, her sly smile almost hiding how her cheeks flush and her pulse quickens. Almost.  
She’s nervous. Excited. Both at once. The Inquisitor, Breach-closer, darkspawn-killer, dragonslayer, _nervous_ when he cautiously rubs her cheekbone with his thumb, and he can’t hide the absolute _adoration_ that clouds his judgment and makes him pull her closer.  
“If the order came from you, I would follow you to the ends of the earth.”  
It obviously wasn’t the answer she expected. Her smile falls, eyes soften, her expression morphs from devious to dumbfounded. She mouths a silent “Oh”, a tiny, _tiny_ smile tugging at the corners of her lips. Solas always found it endearing, the way she took compliments; she was flattered and exalted all day by strangers and never bat an eye, but he speaks purely his mind and her knees go weak.  
Her gaze darts to a spot over his shoulder for a split-second; she thinks, swallows, sucks in a breath.  
“Stop me— Stop me if I’m wrong,” she says softly, and in one fluid motion she rolls onto her toes and kisses him, chaste and soft and _Nessa_ and Solas winds an arm around her waist, knowing she might pull away if he didn’t react the way she needed.  
Oh, but he needed it _far_ more. He’d never admit it, but the lonely life of an apostate caught up to him the second he saw her close the first rift, months ago in the snowy Frostback Mountains. With dirt on her face and that blocky, clunky green armor, she looked the picture of a confused and scared prisoner, torn from her shackles to save the world. And yet, the determined shine in her eye, her set jaw, the force with which she threw herself and her Mark into the fight stirred in him feelings he thought he long since lost. Lost, or repressed after so long of not needing them.  
Solas drags his hand up her spine to the back of her neck and her head tilts with the sudden touch, somehow knowing his intentions, as when his tongue slides over her bottom lip her mouth opens, her gasp stolen into his mouth. He hums, resting his hand on her shoulder. Her bare shoulder, warm under his fingertips.  
It’s then that he remembers she’s wearing the oversized tunic, when she presses somehow closer and he knows _she's not wearing_ … Oh. _Oh._  
She _knew_ he would come up here. Nessa _knew_ it would be Solas to come calling the second he heard her return to Skyhold, so she purposefully stalled in her dressing because she knew he’d run into Dorian, and the Tevinter would blab about her injury, and she knew he would beeline to her quarters as soon as he heard.  
_That little… Spitfire._  
He pulls from her to catch a breath, one she too sorely needed, but they don’t relinquish their closeness just yet. Just another moment. Nessa looks up at Solas, her hair scruffy, pupils blown out, lips reddened and slick and— oh, _Maker_.  
She pulls him inside towards her bed and Solas knows he’s in trouble now.


	5. four months of longing

Nobody questions it when he slinks out of Nessa’s quarters when the moon casts his guilty shadow across the floor of the main hall. Nobody asks why he spent several hours in her private room with her, doing who-knows-what, even if half of Thedas could guess it in three. Nobody grills Solas on why he stares straight ahead and doesn’t make eye contact with anyone as he goes back to his rotunda— he usually walks like that regardless.

But he feels the stares, hears the whispers, can practically taste the disgust on peoples’ tongues when they learn the Inquisitor got cozy with the apostate elf that never left her side on missions, ran to heal her wounds, leaned close and murmured elven in her ear to make her stifle giggles. He’s not worried for his pride, but for hers.

Nessa strides through the main hall the next morning with the high collar of her blue tunic somehow higher than usual. She tugs at it nervously when she passes him, on her way to speak to someone upstairs; she doesn’t say a word to him. He spots her smirk when he rolls his shoulders back, rubbing one of them as if to ease out some stress. The bite mark just above his collarbone is for the two of them alone.

Even so, he feels it again, like when he left one side of her bed warm without his weight in the dead of night. Guilt. He didn’t expect for this… endeavor to go as it has.

Not that he regrets it. He certainly doesn’t regret that night. Or the night after that. He can’t remember feeling this way since… A long, long time ago. Nessa breaks rules with every step she takes, every rift she closes, and she’s broken him in more ways than one.

Her name sits unfamiliar in his mouth. Solas resolved to only call her “Inquisitor” from the second she got the title, as everyone else does, but as soon as he called her by her name, it was like one of the multiple weights lifted off her shoulders. He didn’t know it bothered her so much.

_“Is that an order, Nessa?”_

_“Would you obey it if it was?”_

He feels his smile before he gets a chance to wipe it away. Damn her. The things he would say to her, given the time they regretfully lack.

“You should tell her.”

Cole swings long legs against Solas’s desk, his feet barely brushing the ground.

“You need to tell her,” Cole presses, looking up from under his hat, and Solas finds him staring with worried pale eyes. “It will fester inside, growing, until it spills out of you like demons through rifts. She doesn’t think you’re a demon.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” Solas interrupts, not realizing his sudden blurt echoes through the rotunda. He pauses, lowers his voice, and repeats it. “There are some things in this world that cannot be fixed with words alone.”

“Because you’re afraid to _try.”_

Cole disappears after that. 

Solas hears Nessa talking to Dorian upstairs; something about a letter he’s sending to Ostwick and feelings and whatnot. Dorian sounds like the scandalized party for a change. Solas doesn’t fancy himself the nosy sort, but he can’t exactly ignore Dorian’s outburst over the railing of his corner of library upstairs.

“Tell him how I feel? In the _letter?”_

 _“Yes,_ Dorian,” Nessa says, and Solas can nearly hear her eyeroll in her tone. “Is that really so hard to believe?”

“More than hard to believe— that’s preposterous.” Dorian’s various buckles and clips click as he paces. “If I can write it down, I’d rather tell it to his face.”

Nessa stays silent, but one can imagine her expression: “Go on, you can do it, figure it out”. Dorian stops in his tracks (according to the lack of jingle-jangles on his clothes), and Solas knows Nessa’s words (or lack thereof) finally got through to him.

“…Hm. Ostwick is rather lovely this time of year, according to his letters. Nessa, dear, will you survive without me for a week or two?”

Solas hates to admit that Dorian gave him a good idea, so he pretends it was Nessa’s doing instead.

Telling her the truth… All of it. In concept, it sounds easy, like finding forgotten memories in the Fade and holding them close, keeping them warm. He thinks about Nessa’s hands, flames licking at her fingers, threading between his and holding tight. Close enough to burn, but not enough to hurt; warm, safe, _trusted._

He hears her come downstairs after her laugh bounces around the library upstairs with Dorian’s, and she walks straight to him with a wide smile.

“Dorian’s off to Ostwick tomorrow morning,” she announces, as if Solas didn’t hear a word he said prior. “He has some _words_ to say to my little brother.”

That throws him for a loop. Solas arches a brow at her, curious. “I wasn’t aware you have a brother.”

Nessa nods, leaning her weight onto one leg with a hand at her hip. “Yeah, Isaac. He was here for a while, but went home to help his mother with some personal things.”

Solas almost takes her at face value, but something doesn’t add up there. “Why is your mother in Ostwick?”

Nessa winces. “Well… Isaac’s mother, um, isn’t _my_ mother. He’s my half-brother— we have the same father. That’s most likely why you didn’t notice him when he visited, because he’s not an elf. He’s human.”

“… Interesting.” Solas obviously can’t hide his surprise, as Nessa smirks at the face he wears.

“He’s a good guy. And _Dorian_ seems to be a fan.”

She waggles her brows at him and Solas chuckles, shaking his head. He clasps his hands together behind him and leans forward with a smile. “If he’s anything like you, then I would hope to meet him, sometime.”

Nessa laughs, her cheeks flushed from the compliment. “Don’t let Dorian hear you say that.”

“I highly doubt he’d be afraid of me _stealing_ your brother away.”

His voice comes distant, but Dorian shouts from upstairs “I heard that!”

It’s when Nessa doubles over with laughter that Solas knows. He’s thought it before— many a time— but it’s now that he really _knows,_ when  
she punctuates her giggles with snorts, arms wound around her sides and eyes shut.

He’s in love with her. And there’s not a damned thing he can do about it.

— — — — — 

Solas has a plan. It sounds strange to have a plan of events when it comes to _courting,_ but spontaneity isn’t his strong suit.

He takes her to a clearing, small and secluded, where he knows no prying eyes (or ravens) will listen in. The twin deer statues leer over their heads, unseeing but all-knowing. Nessa’s quiet at his side, her hand in his a small comfort against the flurry of thoughts in his head, the questions and doubts and uncharacteristic worry— she swings their arms back and forth, watching the moonlight glint off the lake ahead with a small, content smile, and his mind clears. For a moment.

“The Veil is thin here,” he announces, surprised by the sound of his own voice within the silence. “Can you feel it on your skin, tingling?”

She nods, but keeps her words to herself. She looks up at him with that same smile she gave the lake and he hesitates, swallows, before lifting a hand and cupping her cheek in his palm, softening when she tilts her head into his touch. Nessa closes her eyes, but Solas keeps his open. He needs to remember this, later. No matter what happens.

“I was trying to determine some way to show you what you mean to me.” 

He drops his hand back to his side. Nessa presses curious fingertips to her face where his hand lingered. 

“I’m listening,” she replies, the hint of a smirk on her lips. “And I can offer a few suggestions.”

“I shall bear that in mind.” Solas presses his lips together. “For now, the best gift I can offer is… the truth.”

He wants to blurt it all out at once, get it over with, but something like this requires time, build-up. A secret like his can’t come forth in one breath. One can’t explain all of _this_ in an evening; Solas can only hope that she’ll want to stick around to listen for more than one night.

“Nessa. You are unlike anyone I have ever met. I thought that when I joined the Inquisition, I would offer my knowledge to help our cause, nothing more.”

He squeezes her hand tight.

“But then… From that first rift, I was certain. You sealed it with a gesture—"

“And felt the whole world change?” 

He acutely remembers their first encounter in the Fade, when he saw her turn to him, her hand move, but she stopped herself before she… did whatever she was going to do. With how she looks at him now, he could take a good guess at what it was.

“A figure of speech,” he murmurs, repeating exactly as he said all those months before. Nessa beams at him and he swears it lights up the entire clearing.

“As much as I’d love to revisit that day… You had something to tell me, Solas?”

Ah, yes. He did. Solas almost hoped she forgot with all the blatant flirting firing back and forth.

How to go about this is the question; he has so much to say, but without the words to say it properly. Solas wonders how Cole would extract these thoughts and articulate them, but also knows he’d say it too cryptically for it to make full sense. And that’s rich, coming from Solas.

“The truth...”

Solas takes a breath, squares his shoulders,

and lies.

“The markings on your face… I discovered what they mean.”

Nessa blinks wide eyes at him, evidently surprised. “What do you mean? They’re— They honor the elven gods, don’t they?”

Solas grimaces, but keeps it hidden, hiding true feelings behind his sympathetic smile and blank gaze. “Not exactly.”

Nessa’s brow furrows as he explains the “truth”— slave markings, from the ancient Arlathan, branded onto elves to mark them as beneath their masters. She argues back, briefly, but Solas knows she believes him; her sad eyes and crestfallen expression tell that much.

“I know a spell. I can remove them, if you wish.”

He knows what to do, now. Now that he continued his long lie, now that he refused to turn against his cowardice and told her something that wasn’t _quite_ the truth. (It is, but it’s not the truth she deserves to know.)

“Get rid of it,” she mumbles, and Solas does.

Light engulfs Nessa’s features as he casts his spell, spreading careful hands over her face as the branding lifts from her skin. He only sees glimpses of her until the spell wears off, but once his light dissipates into flecks in the air around her head and she opens her eyes, he finds that leaving is going to be even worse than he thought it would be.

(When she lurches forward and kisses him he clings to her like a lifeline, ready and willing to lose himself in the forbidden and dangerous, in her, in love. But he can’t tangle her into his mission too; it wouldn’t be fair to him or her if he betrayed himself in favor of his emotion.)

Solas goes back to Skyhold alone, with Nessa’s tearful stare bearing into his shoulder-blades, another stab on his back that burns hotter than the rest.

— — — — — 

Two months pass.

Solas doesn’t come on Inquisition missions anymore. Nessa takes Dorian in his stead, and every time the Tevinter comes downstairs to leave Skyhold he refuses to meet Solas’s eye. Varric doesn’t greet him with cheery nicknames anymore. Even Cole went quiet, standing by Nessa’s side in the courtyard and patting her back when she heaves her heavy sighs.

Solas is alone. This time, he feels it.

It’s two nights before they march upon the Valley of Sacred Ashes when she comes to stand in his rotunda once more. She stands tall, shoulders back, head high. The second he looks up to meet her from in front of his desk, she softens, and something in his chest twists.

“I assume you’re ready to take on our enemy the day after tomorrow.” Solas adjusts the papers in his arms and taps them on the table, straightening their edges. “The time has come to end this madness, once and for all.”

“I want to talk about what happened that night.”

Nessa crosses her arms over her chest, hiding how her hands shake. “I want you to _talk_ to me, Solas. We haven’t spoken since then.”

“We’ve spoken of our mission and the steps towards our victory,” Solas replies airily, turning away from her to feign organizing his papers as he sorts through his thoughts. 

“That doesn’t count,” Nessa protests, and she circles around the desk to face him on the other side. “We haven’t _properly_ spoken since then.”

Well… That’s true. Every “conversation” they’ve had since then felt jilted and unnatural, like they became foreign to each other once more. He supposes they did, in a way. In a way that makes his shoulders heavy, his head hurt. Even in the Fade she follows him, a red-horned Halla that stalks through the forests at his back but disappears when he comes close. He can’t tell her that.

He gave himself the luxury of getting too close, and then stole it right back from his own hands, despite how he yearns for it in a way he hasn’t felt before. Even if he can’t come clean to her, Solas has to be honest with himself at this point; it aches not to. It feels _wrong_ not to.

He loves her, enough to throw away his centuries-planned mission to disappear with her, and it _terrifies_ him.

“I… believe we should focus on the matter at hand. Once we defeat Corypheus, we can talk more, if that is your want.”

But he knows. He knows as she frowns, turns, and walks out of the rotunda, that neither of them will focus with the matching cracks in their hearts.

— — — — — 

Corypheus falls. Nessa stands.

She alone remains in the aftermath and holds herself up by her staff, blood-splattered armor ripped and scorched from the Archdemon’s screeching flames. The rest of the Inquisition stands at the bottom of the stairs leading to the field she defeated the magister in, circled by pillars and felled demons as the dust settles, and Solas stands on the perimeter of it all, focused solely on the woman in the center.

She was so very brave. Far braver than he could ever be.

Unfortunately, the foci sits feet away from Nessa, shattered into three jagged pieces with lingering magic dissipating from its edges. Solas walks towards it and crouches in front of the remains with a sad, tired sigh.

“The orb…”

Nessa carefully lifts herself up from her staff-crutch and watches from a distance; he feels how uncertain she is from here, how she wants to reach out and comfort him, pat his shoulder, hug him. 

(He wants her to, desperately, he longs for her touch but knows it won’t come again. Not in the way they had.)

“Solas, I’m… I’m sorry.” She’s quiet, but her voice seems to echo around the valley when he stands, rests on his staff and closes his eyes. She says sorry for more than just the orb.

“Whatever happens…” Solas takes a deep breath, holds it in his chest, and slowly lets it free. Along with his connection to Nessa—

To the Inquisitor.

“Whatever happens, I want you to know that what we had was real.”

The Inquisitor’s next words catch in her throat and Solas faces her fully. He learned to remember the feelings she wears so blatantly; sad but hopeful simultaneously, with furrowed brows and pressed together lips, but it’s her eyes he can’t escape. They stare through him and all his barriers, grey as the oncoming storm, tears sitting on the edge of her lower lids but never falling down her cheeks. She sighs, looks down, and pretends to smear dirt off her face while she wipes them away. 

Solas always knew she’d be a leader. He didn’t realize he would be an ardent follower himself.

“Inquisitor!”

Cassandra calls from the lower level and the Inquisitor watches Solas for a moment longer, committing his face to memory, as if she knows what happens next. Solas nods her on, wishing her well with no words past his mouth, and the Inquisitor smiles at him, one last time. 

He’ll never forget that, really. After all he did to her, she still offered him a smile before she turned away from him.

Solas waits until she goes halfway down the stairs before he walks out of view, aiming to leave, but something anchors him to the spot behind an untouched pillar. He can’t hear their conversation, but knows congratulations spread like wildfire when the Inquisitor announces her victory.  
He dares to watch for a few minutes more. Just a few more, until Cassandra asks “And where is Solas?”.

When Nessa turns to look at him, standing at the top of the stairs, she finds he’s gone, disappeared into the battlefield behind her. She puts on a brave face while Solas hides his cowardice behind the pillar, waiting for them to return to Skyhold. Long after they leave, after he leaves, he sits in his hiding place, remembering her last smile before all he saw was the back of her head, the remnants of her Mark sparking from her skin. 

He doesn’t see her again. He only remembers in dreams, and somehow, that’s more painful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> surprise bitch
> 
> super-dooper long update after many a moon of nothing bc ilu. only one more chapter left! hot damn
> 
> also, some fun new facts: nessa is my friend's inquisitor, while nessa's younger brother, isaac, is my inquisitor! 
> 
> (section 3 contains some lines directly from the final solas romance cutscene, and i don't take credit for any of them! those belong to the delightful da:i team.)
> 
> visit me on tumblr: rosielibrary


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